Serialization Protocol

Thrift

Kitex only support Thrift Binary protocol codec, Compact currently is not supported.

If you are using thrift protocol encoding, codes should be generated by kitex cmd tool:

Client side：

kitex -type thrift ${service_name} ${idl_name}.thrift

Server side:

kitex -type thrift -service ${service_name} ${idl_name}.thrift

We have optimized Thrift’s Binary protocol codec. For details of the optimization, please refer to the “Reference - High Performance Thrift Codec” chapter. If you want to close these optimizations, you can add the -no-fast-api argument when generating code.

Protobuf

Protocol Type

Kitex supports two types of protocol for protobuf:

1. Custom message protocol: it’s been considered as kitex protobuf, the way of generated code is consistent with Thrift.
2. gRPC protocol: it can communication with grpc directly, and support streaming.

If the streaming method is defined in the IDL, the serialization protocol would adopt gRPC protocol, otherwise Kitex protobuf would be adopted. If you want using gRPC protocol, but without stream definition in your proto file, you need specify the transport protocol when initializing client (No changes need to be made on the server because protocol detection is supported)：

// Using WithTransportProtocol specify the transport protocol
cli, err := service.NewClient(destService, client.WithTransportProtocol(transport.GRPC))

Generated Code

Only support proto3, the grammar reference: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/gotutorial.

Notice:

1. What is different from other languages, generating go codes must define go_package in the proto file
2. Instead of the full path, just using go_package specify the package name, such as: go_package = “pbdemo”
3. Download the protoc binary and put it in the $PATH directory

Client side：

kitex -type protobuf -I idl/ idl/${proto_name}.proto

Server side:

kitex -type protobuf -service ${service_name} -I idl/ idl/${proto_name}.proto